Preparing your heart for Easter

Looking for the new and novel can be a dangerous thing in the Christian life.

Humans are always chasing new things.

New restaurants. New movies. New experiences.

For Christians, it might be a new worship song or a new dynamic preacher or a new conference everyone is attending.

But new is not always better. Especially for Christians.

For example, “new” doctrine is typically out of bounds. I tell our church all the time that we promise not to teach them “anything new.” As far as our core beliefs, we want to proudly stand upon the things the church has always believed.

But more than that, so much of the Christian life and worship of the church isn’t about doing something new at all. It’s about remembering and rehearsing something ancient.

Each week we gather together to sing, pray, hear God’s Word proclaimed, and to fellowship with one another. In each of those moments, we hope the experience has a sense of freshness to it. But the goal of every Sunday is not to hear the best sermon yet or to unlock some previously unknown Bible mystery in small group. Instead, the goal remains the same Sunday after Sunday: We gather together to worship king Jesus, to rehearse the good news and remember his faithfulness.

Sunday happens once a week. And every week we gather on the Lord’s day, seeking something familiar rather than something foreign. When we gather for worship, we are not supposed to long for something we’ve never experienced before. We’re looking forward to returning again to something we experience all the time: gathering with God’s people, in God’s presence, around God’s Word, through God’s Spirit, to exalt God’s Son.

When our family gathers around the dinner table, the focus is not on receiving “the best meal ever.” Our hearts are focused on gratitude because the Lord has graciously allowed us to share such sacred time together once again.

Just like Sunday happens once a week, Easter happens every year. And each year on Easter, we remember and rehearse the same story. The presentation may vary from year to year. But the details don’t change.

That’s okay because what makes every Easter so special is not what makes it different than all the Easters that came before it. Every Easter is special because of its sameness and symmetry with two thousand years of Easter Sundays going all the way back to the empty tomb the women found in the midst of a garden.

So how can you prepare your heart for Easter?

You can begin by reminding yourself what Easter is all about. The women were the first to proclaim the good news about the glorious resurrection of God’s Son. And ever since that first Easter, Christians have gathered to celebrate and share the same story.

Easter isn’t great because it changes. It’s great because it doesn’t.

You can prepare your heart for Easter not by expecting something unusual to happen on that Sunday, but by remembering the fact that Easter is about celebrating something that is not only unusual but unbelievable. And yet it is true. The tomb the women found empty was merely borrowed for the weekend.

The nail-scarred feet that purchased your freedom walked out of that grave on Easter morning. And no matter how much time passes or how many Easters we live to see, the resurrection of the Son of God will always be good news worth celebrating.

You can prepare your heart for Easter by focusing on the magnitude of Jesus’ life-saving death and resurrection. And you can rejoice that instead of something new, you will gather with God’s people to hear the same good news that has been turning the world upside down for 2,000 years. And it never gets old.

In these final days before Easter, prepare your heart to remember and rehearse the greatest story ever told.